Several Extrasolar Planets May Be Optical Illusions

person-0.9a writes "Seems that a few of the extrasolar planets detected via their sun's wobble might be written off according to a CNN article. You can also read it about it in New Scientist."

Comments

What can we learn from this?

[wildcard023]

It seems that if we have discovered 100 'planets' and 95% of them really are planets, we have discovered an interesting occurance which happens to about 5% of the stars that are capable of supporting planets.

Isn't there something we can learn from these stars? They seem to be unstable at best if they have spots that large on them. Maybe we can use this information to learn more about the formation of stable vs unstable stars.

--
Mike

Re: Guesses based on conjectures

[Black Parrot]

> For methods beyond that, we start using methods that basically say "as long as our theories about how such and such behaves turn out to be true, this method of determining stellar distance should hold true."

I can tell from your other comments that you're not just trashing science, but for the benefit of any jerky knees in the audience I'd like to point out that that's how everything works, whether we're pushing the limits of what science can tell us about the universe or merely trying to design a better mousetrap. At some point you've just got to go with what you think you know, and be willing to make corrections later if that's how things turn out.

Numbers Out Of Hand.

[phriedom]

I love to see the way the story progresses. First, the Scientific American article says ONE found planet, which was suspect all along, has been disproven, and they do not expect this to apply to many other planets because it is a particularly young star.

The CNN article turns the statement from a negative to a positive and says 95% are secure and 5% NEED TO BE CHECKED IN MORE DETAIL

Then it gets posted on slashdot and ONE becomes SEVERAL.

Now Wildcard has concluded that the 5% that are "unsure" do have this wild sunspot activity, and that they constitute 5% of the stars capable of supporting planets.

Oh crap, I just fed a troll, didn't I. Shame.

This solves a problem

[stwrtpj]

From the CNN article:

Henry and his colleagues took a new look at the star identified as HD 192263, which both California and Swiss researchers said in 1999 had large, gaseous Jupiter-like planet swinging around it in a tight orbit.

The fact that this particular planet is not a planet at all actually neatly solves a dilemma that scientists had with this discovery in the first place. If I recall correctly, the fact that this was an apparent gas-giant type planet so close to its star threw a monkey wrench into the standard theory about star system formation. The standard theory calls for only those planets sufficiently distant from the primary to retain their primordial gas envelopes. The planets closer to the star would have theirs blown off by the intense solar wind generated by the star when it first ignites. I believe the technical term for this phenominon is the T-Tauri wind.

Naturally, the idea of gravitational capture after the star was formed is cited as an alternate explanation, but it would take a rather precise vector for the planet to be captured into such a tight orbit without crashing into the star or being flung out into space. This new information solves the problem,

Re: Guesses based on conjectures

[GregWebb]

(Am I about to start a flamewar? Please, no, I certainly won't post in one.)

Yes, but I wish that was better recognised. There's a lot of science which definitely falls into this category - stuff like size and age of universe, planetary history and so on.

Speaking as someone with some scientific background and an interest in religion, it's somewhat irritating when people consistently bleat about how science has proved various things like Earth being however many billion years old. No, it hasn't - and it can't, by definition, because it can't observe or repeat it - it's merely that the current theories, which seem to hold water at the moment, suggest that that's true. But the whole foundation for the theories can be a bit like a house of cards at times.

Anyway, that's me out.